Wealth Managers
Analysis by Steffen Binder, Research Director
In his seminal work, ‘Competitive Strategy’, the world-renowned Prof. Michael Porter has identified five major forces that shape competition and success for the players in every industry. If you look at social media through the perspective of these five forces, the consequences they unleash for the competitive dynamic in the banking sector become very clear....
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2011 Mobile Applications Report
The mobile applications of Deutsche Bank and the French bank Caisse d'Epargne come out as winners in a benchmarking of a total of almost 200 mobile apps, offered by the world´s top 50 banks. Scoring 40 points out of 60 with just a single app, Bank of China is the winner in the category of best standalone banking app. Surprisingly, only one US-based bank has made it into the Top10 of...
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Interview with Trevor Pavitt, Passive Investing
Trevor Pavitt and Alex Arnbäck are co-founders of Passive Investing, a Geneva-based wealth adviser specializing in passive investment strategies. They have just published their new book "Heal Your Investments". In this interview ex-Private Banker Trevor Pavitt speaks about what motivated him and co-author Arnbäck to write a book that challenges the philosophies and strategies of the existing wealth management industry...
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UK Wealth Analyst Francis Groves on the UK Ban for Kickbacks
The UK’s Retail Distribution Review (RDR) has been a long time arriving. Zero hour for the end of commission-based advice to private individuals is roughly 15 months away; midnight on 31st December 2012, to be precise. RDR could usher in a golden age of advising investors without the baleful effects of investment fund kickbacks to advisers. However, in truth, the outlook is not as sunny as that....
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MyPrivateBanking in the Media
Recent research published by MyPrivateBanking received extensive media coverage from the world’s leading business newspapers such as Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Wall Street Journal’s Article “Financial Advisers´Little Secrets: Their Past Results” reported...
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Initiating a Discussion on the Future of Wealth Management
Over the last two years MyPrivateBanking.com has evolved into a platform to educate and connect wealth management clients, promote their rights and interests and highlight the responsibilities of wealth managers and private banks.
To capture the essence of these ...
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MyPrivateBanking Survey
New research by MyPrivateBanking Research finds that only half of the world’s 30 most important banks and wealth managers offer mobile applications for their clients. Even worse, only three providers (10%) go beyond applications related to online banking....
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MyPrivateBanking Research Flash
New research findings by MyPrivateBanking Research reveal that only 10% of the world’s most important wealth managers publish performance data for their discretionary accounts and only 22% offer specific information about their fees....
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New Research by MyPrivateBanking
The recent events in North Africa and the Middle East show once again that every time a dictator falls from power, governments, politicians and banks across the world announce that his, his family’s and follower’s assets in foreign countries will be frozen and later returned to the new, legitimate government. But the fact of the matter is that these announcements have only been paying lip service to the public....
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New MyPrivateBanking Research Report
The 2011 report on private banking websites by MyPrivatebanking Research finds that compared to the 2009 survey the overall quality of the websites has not improved: less than half of the banks have mastered the basic requirements for a private banking website and...
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Comment by Steffen Binder, Research Director MyPrivateBanking
The EU, the Swiss government and the US have taken measures to freeze the assets of Messrs. Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi and their respective friends and families. But can this be enough? It often takes years, even decades until a court decides what should happen to frozen assets......
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MyPrivate Banking Research Brief
According to a recent MyPrivateBanking report wealthy individuals from the Middle East and Africa hold about USD 1.5 trillion in foreign bank accounts (offshore). We estimate that at least 15% of these assets have been obtained through illegal means and transferred out of the home...
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Reality Check on DAX-Prognoses 2007 - 2010
End of 2009 the average prediction for the closing of the DAX in 2010 was 6217 points. The actual close of the Dax on December 31st was 6915 points. Only one out of 10 analysts predicted a closing level in...
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Social Media in Wealth Management
Banks and wealth managers are just starting to conquer social media. Our recent report on Wealth Management and Social Media looked for great examples of how to exploit social media in different ways....
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New MyPrivateBanking Report
60% of surveyed Wealth Managers have either no activity or are only sporadically active on social networks – Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole and BNP have the best social media presences....
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The Future of Private Banking
So, the quarterly numbers for Credit Suisse and UBS are out. What we see in the private banking divisions is not very reassuring. On the surface all seems fine but private banking profitability is in serious trouble....
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New Research Report: The Future of Fee-Only Advice
In a recent research report on fee-only advice MyPrivateBanking research surveyed 300 private banking clients in Germany on their needs and preferences with regard to fee-only financial advice. ...
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Future of Private Banking
Private banking profits in Switzerland have been among the fattest worldwide, reaching up to 5% of invested assets (in terms of gross margin). Private banking fees are typically in the range of ...
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Comment by Steffen Binder, MyPrivateBanking
Only the early and smart investment of personal savings will enable the young to keep their standard of living 20, 30 or 40 years from today. Yet, they receive financial advice that is still mostly bad, misleading and ridden by conflicts of...
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Wealth Managers: The Wealth of Nations
Receive $2,000 each Christmas from your government’s investment fund? Sounds great and is true if you live in Alaska. Although Sovereign Wealth Funds seem to be a new phenomenon, they have been around for...
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Comment by Steffen Binder, Research Director
Talk to a private banker about the Internet and the usual response is a shrug of the shoulders. Dig a bit deeper and you hear that wealthy clients are too conservative, too cautious or too old to use the Internet...
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Wealth Managers: Using the Web to Win New Clients
The future of private banking and wealth management is increasingly tied to the Internet. Today’s new generation of clients uses the website of a wealth manager as the primary information source to start any potential business...
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Guest Comment by Joseph Fuller, CEO Monitor Group
On Wall Street, bankers continue to speculate about a government role in their future compensation. Although policymakers shelved the issue during the health care showdown in the United States and the Greek debt crisis in Europe, that suspension is likely to be temporary. Seldom have the heads of the world’s leading economies demonstrated such unanimity of opinion on a controversy. ...
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Comment by Steffen Binder, MD of MyPrivateBanking
On Wednesday the shareholders and the board of UBS have held their yearly General Meeting in Basel, Switzerland. It has become a ritual at such UBS events that vocal shareholder groups bash management and board, often, but not always, with good reason. ...
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MyPrivateBanking Research
The majority of Private Banks and Wealth Managers worldwide shows little regard for the protection of personal data on their public websites. MyPrivateBanking Research surveyed 195 websites in the 17 most important banking markets and found that 61% of the wealth managers and private banks do not offer secure web messaging and...
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Comment: Good Old Times for Offshore Wealth Managers Gone
The latest data from the Swiss National Bank show that foreign assets in private Swiss bank accounts have declined by 30% since the beginning of 2008 whereas domestic assets have declined by only about 14%....
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Wealth: New Trend in Client Behavior
An important trend for wealth managers and private bankers is that private banking clients use more frequently social networks like facebook or LinkedIn and visit...
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Wealth: Engaging Potential Clients Online
Wealth Managers do not use interactive tools sufficiently on their websites. In our recent study the majority of the websites displayed an outdated internet functionality from back in 2000. A failure to...
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Wealth Managers: Lessons from the HSBC Data Theft
We don’t know how many client files “Hervé” and his mysterious female companion have stolen from their employer HSBC. The estimates range from “under 10” (HSBC statement) to 130,000 (statement of the French prosecutors). But fact is that sensitive data of a Private Bank have again been stolen by an employee of that bank....
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New MyPrivateBanking Report Released
The private banking websites of UBS, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse come out as winners in a ranking of the online presence of the world's top 20 wealth managers and private banks. In the study UBS ranked first, with a total score of 82 out of possible 100 points. Overall, the report titled "How Wealth Managers Win Clients Online" came to the conclusion that the wealth managers have no reason yet to be satisfied...
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United States: US to Tighten the Noose on Offshore Accounts
Behind the technocratic term “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act 2009” hides yet another round in the hunt for unpaid US-taxes around the globe. After the US government has successfully extracted the names and account data of 5000 UBS customers and re-negotiated the double-taxation treaty with Switzerland and other former offshore destinations, the next law is already in the making....
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Analysis: The Future of Wealth Management
Offshore is neither a value proposition nor competitive advantage anymore. Only an approach build on systematic and strategic client segmentation can lead to a new and improved market positioning that differentiates banks in offshore jurisdictions successfully from their foreign and domestic competitors. ...
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Wealth: Results of of Private Banking Survey
One major goal of our survey was to uncover the total costs of wealth management the private banking client has to pay, that for two reasons are widely underestimated by clients: Firstly, the official fees are ...
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Comment: UBS Strategy
This week UBS had its investors’ day and CEO Oswald Grübel laid out his strategy going forward. Moody’s, just one day later, has downgraded various ratings of UBS. The majority of analysts also keep their negative outlook on UBS. But while it is easy to criticize UBS, the case is nevertheless doubtful. ...
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Wealth Management: Industry Analysis
Yesterday Bank Julius Bär has made an interim statement announcing that some assets have left the bank in Switzerland because of the difficult regulatory environment. We are wondering how big the impact on the Swiss banking system really is. Have foreign account holders already moved substantial amounts of assets because of the pressure of the US, Germany and others on the banking secret? We have taken a look at recent statistics from the Swiss National Bank to clarify the big picture....
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Wealth: Results of Survey on Private Banks
The investment proposal is the basis for all future decisions and in our survey we thoroughly analyzed the proposal we received from 20 wealth managers and private banks. In a good proposal the private banker should...
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Wealth Management: Background Analysis
Yesterday the Austrian Minister of Finance Josef Pröll announced that Austria intends, along with Luxembourg, to block the EU-Liechtenstein treaty on tax fraud. Pröll argues that anonymous investment vehicles like UK trusts must also be included in any effort to regulate the banking secret. The background of Austria’s reluctance to agree to the tax treaty is that if the agreement with Liechtenstein is approved by the EU, Austria will be one step closer to losing its own banking secret.
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Comment: Why In-House Funds Are a Problem
Our latest report indicates that about 80% of wealth managers’ equity funds under perform their index benchmark. We have looked at the most common funds, invested broadly in equities across the regions of Europe, Asia, USA and globally. The result is hardly shocking or even new. Dozens of research studies in the past have come to the same conclusion.
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New Equity Fund Report Released
The equity funds returns of the 15 biggest asset management companies and private bankers worldwide are worse than the respective benchmark indexes. This is the main conclusion drawn by a new study done by the analysts of MyPrivateBanking.com. In the process, equity funds...
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Wealth: Results of Survey on Top European Private Banks
Private banking Clients have rather little time for interaction with their potential private banker to make the important decision whom to trust with managing their money. Consequently private banking...
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Wealth: Easier Search and Selection of Providers in 60 Countries
On the MyPrivateBanking.com website, those interested can find the detailed profiles of more than 500 private banks and wealth managers in 60 countries. These profiles contain, besides the contact data, current information about locations, number of employees, legal form, date of establishment and the amount of the assets managed....
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A Farewell to America
Dr. Konrad Hummler, Chairman of the Swiss Private Banker Association, CEO and owner of Switzerland’s oldest private bank, Wegelin, is not a man who minces his words. The title of his most recent article on investment is “A Farewell to America” (available only in German). ...
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Comment
On August 19 the US and the Swiss government disclosed some (but not all) details of their agreement regarding the case IRS vs. UBS. It required only six pages for the US and the Swiss authorities to determine how the private financial data of thousands of US citizens will be swiftly handed over by the UBS to the Swiss government and thereafter to the waiting hands of the US authorities. ...
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Wealth Managers: The Success of Warren Buffett
This week Berkshire Hathaway’s Class-A stock reached USD 100,000, the first time in 8 months. Berkshire’s Class-A shares are the most expensive on the New York Stock exchange. The stock is now up 40% since its 6-year low in March 2009....
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Asia: Costs of Wealth Management
Wealth Manager Manulife announced a cut in fees for its Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) portfolios by about 0.35% to 0.5% per annum. The MPF (link) is a compulsory retirement programme for residents in Hong Kong
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Asia: The New Wealth
In April 2009 a commentary column appeared in the Chinese People’s Daily with the title “Don’t Hate the Rich, Be One of Them”. The columnist, Ling Hongmei, argued that “a society not creating wealthy people is never progressing on the healthy track”.
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Asia-Pacific: Changes in Indian Tax Systems
The Indian finance minister has proposed to raise the threshold limit for the levy of wealth tax from the existing Rs 15 lakh to Rs 30 lakh (ca. USD 62k) starting March 31, 2010. The tax rate of 1 per cent of the net wealth ...
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Comment by Steffen Binder, Managing Director, MyPrivateBanking.com
Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported about massive kickbacks allegedly paid by the Madoff firm to the Austrian fund manager and bank founder Sonja Kohn. In its report the newspaper refers to investigations of US and Austrian authorities...
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Wealth: The World Wealth Report 2009
The assets under management of the 15 leading wealth management firms fell on average by 22% from 2007 to 2008. But in the same period the pre-tax profit margins of these firms, dropped only from 30% to 24.5%. This is a, frequently overlooked, result of...
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Wealth: Global Study on Investor Behaviour
A recent study reveals that the majority of wealthy investors (88 per cent) recognise that there are significant investment opportunities available in the current environment. However, the majority of them (68 per cent) are shying away from investing....
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Wealth: Real Estate Markets
Britain’s property market has been a disaster in the last one and a half years. After five years of exploding prices and then followed by the credit crunch, global recession and an overall tightening of the mortgage market, the real estate market crashed. Most regions across the UK have been affected. Some areas have been hit extremely hard. Average prices in...
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Offshore in Delaware
President Obama has put the fight against tax evasion high on his political agenda, especially with respect to money in global offshore centres. During his campaign Obama liked to joke that one building on the Cayman Islands...
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Asia-Pacific: Emerging Markets for Wealth Management
The number of millionaires in China has grown drastically over the last few years. As a consequence the private banking activities have grow as well....
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Wealth: Study on Quality of Financial Advice in Germany
Twenty percent of private investors in Germany are willing to pay for independent advice on wealth management. ...
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Wealth: Double Taxation Agreements Revised
The Swiss government has just announced that they have completed the revision of the first double taxation agreement with Denmark to comply with OECD standards on information exchange. ...
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New Survey on Top European Private Banks
MyPrivateBanking.com has just released its annual survey on the top European based private banks and wealth managers. 20 of the most important private banks in Europe were selected to assess the quality of their customer interface, their investment proposal and the total cost of...
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Wealth: Private Banks In Search Of A New Business Model
The recent actions by the US Justice Department and the IRS against the UBS highlight the increasing pressure on the so called offshore banking model. Private Banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, ...
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Wealth: Private Banks Under Attack
Quirin bank is headquartered in Berlin. But you cannot find its offices in the posh new centre of Berlin-Mitte or in the fashionable quarters of Charlottenburg. Quirin is located at the...
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Wealth: Insights in Private Banking
Trying to buy the “private banking” service is as cumbersome as buying a car. To get a good deal a client has to compare different offers of wealth managers and private bankers, try to understand...
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Asia-Pacific: ETFs Further Spreading
Investors who want to participate in the economic growth of Greater China (PR China, Taiwan, Hong-Kong) could so far only choose between the rather expensive funds or try their luck as a stock picker. As a new sign that the spreading of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) is accelerating, the stock exchanges in Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai want to collaborate ...
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United States: UBS Selling Part of US Branch Network
It looks like the Swiss-based bank UBS, the world largest wealth manager, continues to scale-down its operations in the U.S. market....
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Wealth: New Verdict of German High Court
The German Federal High Court ruled that a banks themselves have the burden of proof on whether a client was informed about kickbacks and not the other way round. ...
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Asia-Pacific: Offshore-Banking
The Indian Tax Authority has send notices to more than 50 individuals who allegedly have accounts with the LGT Bank based in the tax haven of Liechtenstein, requesting information on...
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Wealth: Costs of Wealth Management
Over the course of the last few years, we have been seeing an increasing number of clients demanding more transparency from their wealth managers. Since self-regulation obviously has not worked, laws and courts have stepped in to end the practice of kickbacks, or at least make them transparent to the client...
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Wealth: Analysis
The Economist has just reported that, according to a survey, 15% of the wealthy had left their main adviser last year and a further 70% had pulled some of their money away. So it seems that quite a few wealthy individuals...
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